Column

Modern websites, on which new contents are published on a regular basis similar to newspapers, use so-called Content Management Systems (CMS). Formerly, journalists used to type their articles on a typewriter and changed to electronic word processors such as MSWord later on. Nowadays, they use a CMS desktop. The advantages are obvious: The text is written directly in the medium for which it has been prepared. The preview feature allows an immediate check of the visual effect of text and images.

CMS and Multilingualism

All modern Content Management Systems are suitable for running multilingual websites. So the question is not whether but how the CMS deals with multilingualism. Most CMS follow a philosophy of their own. The One-Tree Technology¹ is just beginning to prevail.

The "One-Tree" technology uses only one sitetree: The translated text is provided by the CMS with a reference to the original text and stored in the data bank. The reference allows, for example, to show the Arabic translation instead of the original German text.

The main advantage of the "One-Tree" technology is clarity: There is only one sitetree for all languages instead of one sitetree (and thus an independent webpage) for each language. The simplified cooperation between the journalist and the translator is another important aspect: The translator does his job in the journalist's configuration (embedded images, references to other websites, etc.) and can – as the latter – check his working results immediately on the monitor.